Jay Leno’s Garage Vehicle Wash - Review and How-to by Mike Phillips

[Mike Phillips]

Jay Leno’s Garage Vehicle Wash - Review and How-to by Mike Phillips


Jay Leno is a genuine Rock Star in the car hobby, no ifs, ands or buts. And now... Autogeek is the exclusive distributor of his new car care line, Jay Leno’s Garage Advanced Vehicle Care.


So now it's time to start using and testing out Jay's new line of products and first up is his Vehicle Wash.




For most of us, washing our car is the most common car care procedure we do. We wax our cars once or twice a year but we wash are cars often to keep them clean and shining. To test Jay's vehicle wash out I wanted a really dirty car. So I called my wife's daughter Coral and asked her if I could use her 2013 Camaro.

Coral loves her car but she's not what I would call a car enthusiast and certainly not an enthusiast detailer. Sure she appreciates a clean shiny car and while new generation Camaros are modern versions of days-gone-by muscle cars... at the same time this 2-door Chevy is simply transportation to Coral.

The car is driven as a daily driver and parked outside 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. It never sees a garage. It's also parked under a tree when she's at home so you're gong to see a tree leaves and actually branches scattered over the car. She lives in Stuart but works in West Palm Beach so she puts a lot of miles on the car and as such the front of the car has a pretty good collection of dead bug splatter. There's also tree sap and all kinds of other crusty stuff on it.

This makes it a perfect test car to test the cleaning ability of Jay's Vehicle Wash.

As is my norm when doing any type of write-up over the last 20+ years, I like to fully document my projects. Take a look and I think you'll see that the pictures of the Camaro match the description I just shared.



This picture was taken around 7:45am on Monday, March 27, 2017. You can see how the sun is shining on the side of the car it's early morning and the sun is low in the sky.





Look at the door around the sun and you can see a dirt film over the paint...






Same dirt film and tree sap splotches on the window are on the paint it's just this crud shows up better on the glass...





The Camaro has a great looking, aggressive design...





But this car is ugly with dead bug splatter all over the front clip....












On the back of the car there are leaves and tiny tree branches trapped between the rear wing and the trunk lid and also in the gap around the rear window.















Yeah... she's dirty....

[Mike Phillips]

Continued....



Here's Jay's Vehicle Wash and one of my favorite wash medias, a Microfiber Chenille Wash Mitt.







IMPORTANT FIRST STEP

Spray off loose dirt with a strong blast of water

When you have the kind of loose dirt and debris I shared in the above pictures on a scratch-sensitive clearcoated car like this Camaro it's vitally important to blast off all this crud first before ever getting a wash mitt close to the paint. If you don't remove those old dried out leaves they're going to break up and lodge into your wash mitt and then every time you push the mitt over the paint you're going to scratch the HECK out of the paint.











Blast the front to remove some of the bug splatter and also get it wet to start softening it up...

[Mike Phillips]

Continued...



After thoroughly spraying down this dirty Camaro, next up is to mix up my car wash solution.







Instructions say to pour the product onto the face of a wash mitt...








But I want some in my wash bucket too...







Note the use of a Grit Guard Insert? This is an extra level of protection to help prevent inflicting swirls and scratches into the car. The way it works is dirt particles gathered onto your wash mitt after you wash a panel get trapped UNDER the Grit Guard Insert when you dip the wash mitt back into your bucket of car wash solution. You can also use the 2 Bucket Method for washing your car. Just to note, you're supposed to swish the mitt against the grit guard surface to loosen dirt off the mitt when you dunk the mitt into the bucket. (the dirt and debris might not simply fall of the mitt on their own)





Next blast the water/soap solution to create mounds of suds.... (I also stuck the spray down into the bucket to blast the soap sitting on the bottom to mix it into the rest of the 4 gallons of water)





Ready to start washing....

[Mike Phillips]

Continued....


When it comes to washing the body of the car, I started at the top, the roof and then windows and worked my way down. There was no one here at work at the time to take a picture. These pictures were taken by Andre when he arrived...





Now this is important... look at the position of the mitt in the next three pictures...


I've placed the mitt at the back of the middle of the hood...





I'm moving the mitt toward the front....




Now I'm at the front of the hood....




Next I move the mitt toward me a little so that my next pass back towards the windshield overlaps a little into the first pass. Then when I move the mitt towards the front I repeat this, that is always moving the mitt towards the outside, that is towards me so I'm only making a few passes over the entire one half of the hood.

This is how you avoid putting swirls and scratches into our car's paint. You THINK about how you move your hand when pushing the mitt over a panel.

DON'T SCRUB THE PAINT

That is don't move the mitt over and over and over a section of paint with no "method" to the madness. IF there is loose dirt on the surface and if you do loosen it you will be GRINDING it into the paint putting swirls and scratches into the paint.

It takes HOURS to correctly machine compound and polish modern clearcoats to remove swirls and scratches so do yourself a favor, do your wallet a favor and do your car's paint a favor and don't scrub the paint when washing.

[Mike Phillips]

Continued....



Then before any car wash soap can dry, rinse the car...









No wax protection

Before drying the car I took this picture. Note how the water is laying completely flat on the surface. There is ZERO indication of water beading and my guess is there is ZERO wax protection of any type on this car.

[Mike Phillips]

Continued....



After drying the car I took these shots to show you what CLEAN swirled out paint looks like using the sun as my swirl finder light.










Yep... this car is due for some polishing work....

[Mike Phillips]

Continued....


Now this is what a thoroughly washed and dried car should look like. All the dirt, road grime, leaves, sticks, tree sap and dead bugs have been removed and even though there are swirls in the paint at least it's gleaming in the early morning sun!







Jay's Vehicle Wash works great. It did exactly what I needed it to do and that's get this car clean!





If you like a quality car wash and you trust that if he put his name on the bottle then the stuff inside is good... get yourself some Jay Leno’s Garage Vehicle Wash!


On Autogeek.com


Jay Leno’s Garage Vehicle Wash



And always have extra wash mitts on hand in case you drop your wash mitt on the ground.

Micro-Chenille Wash Mitt 3-Pack - Choose Your Mitts!


Check out the Grit Guard Insert and other cool tools to make washing your car more fun and safer to the paint...

Grit Guard Inserts and other car wash tools

[Mike Phillips]

.


Before








After

[ronkh57]

So it got all the dead bugs off without needing bug remover??

[Dan K]

Another nice write up Mike.

The directions say to use 3-4 ounces per wash, and the product page says that 1-2 ounces creates a lot of suds. At either dilution, it seems rather expensive compared to other quality soaps, even if it works well. At any rate, always good to see new products released.